Prisoner 52 (33 page)

"Is that what you think?"

"I think you got an idea, maybe when you were real young, and it got buried deep. And when you went outside the Citadel and you found out it didn't exist, not in the way you thought it did, it did something to you. Something so bad you convinced yourself it was your hand you needed that Mute for."

"You don't know what you're talking about, old man."

"I don't?" He said and looked at him. "I was an old, burned out miner a long time before I was an old, burned out Enforcer. You think you're the first person to see the things he loves die in war? Hell, to see the things he loves die at all?"

"I don't know what I think. I don't know what I thought then." Tezac said. "Except that when the war was over, it would be over. Just like he thought. And if we did what we had to do to win, we would have won something more. Something more than this."

"Let me tell you something, kid: it's never over. It doesn't stop just because you wanted it to and if you love something, you've got to fight to protect it. These things, they die when they're left alone and when men stop dying for them. He died protecting it, and you think he died for no good reason. Now I'd tell you he died for what seemed to him the best reason of all. That's the kind of man something like that needs. The kind of
man who'll bleed and not ask why he's bleeding; that'll die if he has to, if it means the thing will live. Now you have to decide. Are you that kind of man or aren't you?"

Tezac said nothing, but turned round and stepped past him. He awaited the cadre of Maerazians that approached them and threw away his rifle and told Leargam to do the same, but the old man had not turned around. Instead he took a step nearer the edge of the pit and looked down at the glint he saw in the black meltwater therein, the green glimmer that played across its surface. Those that bore with them staves drew up foremost to meet Tezac and the others circled round the two, levelled their cryptic rifles at them both and stood tall in their obsidian suits truly alien to anything he had seen elsewhere in the universe.

"You," The centermost of the warlocks said, his voice a low rasp that sounded through his helmet's outbound transmitter as though from within some sarcophagal chamber, and pointed at him. "You will come with us."

Tezac held his gaze
he was sure, hidden behind the visor of his helmet, and then looked across the glacial plain where it was visible through the gaps in the Maerazians formed up about them and saw the others herding what inmates remained alive and yet sane into groups destined for the specialised skiffs that now descended from beyond the clouds above. In a moment he knew that he would watch them be fit into the slave cages and he with them.

"There's not much choice, is there?" He said and looked back to the warlocks, but they
only stared from behind their dark angular helmets and he watched the tassels atop them billow in the wind. "Come on, Leargam."

"What?" The old man said and looked up from the viridian glow and saw the raiders that now surrounded them. "What's going on, kid?"

"The life of a slave." Tezac said and started forward. "Pray to the Gods it's short."

Gauntleted hands caught him up about the arms and a pair of Maerazians hauled him away to join Tezac
, who they kept restrained under threat of immediate destruction, as if he were in truth a giant of old. The warlocks left them to go they knew not where and the raiders took them away to stand at a site of their own choosing and formed up around them again, waiting. Leargam watched the Maerazians that were yet by the crater their master had died to form and he watched how they searched with their eyes within it as he had. Only they got down inside as he had not. Then the roaring of reverse thrusters sounded overhead and he looked away to the dropship that lowered down for them alone and of the pit he saw no more.